First, this spell is to help mitigate a planned houserule where all healing spells instead convert lethal damage to non-lethal and make you fatigued, similar to the WoT RPG healing weaves. This spell is based on the weave Renew, for anyone familiar with that resource.

I understand the balance issues in making the change, but in this thread I would like opinions and advice on this particular spell, and how it would interact with the altered game world.

Touch of Renewal immediately suspends the effects of non-lethal damage suffered by the character, as well as the penalties of the fatigued and exhausted conditions. A character does not heal non-lethal damage while under the effect of this spell, but can still suffer lethal and non-lethal damage. Healing spells cast on the subject of this spell still convert lethal damage to non-lethal and still apply the fatigued condition. At the end of the duration, the character suffers 1d4 points per level of additional non-lethal damage (Fortitude save for half) and becomes fatigued. If the character is already fatigued, he becomes exhausted. If he is already exhausted, he cannot heal non-lethal damage on his own until he loses the exhausted condition, and he remains exhausted until he receives 8 hours of sleep, at which point he begins to heal normally but is still fatigued.

To mitigate the ability to effectively ignore damage, I have placed a cap on non-lethal damage. Once you go over that cap, further non-lethal damage is applied as lethal. That makes this spell a blessing and a curse, because you can still accrue non-lethal damage but it wouldn't affect you until the spell expired. Someone could, conceivably, work themselves to death while under the effects of the spell and not know (IC) until the spell ended and they died. Thanks in advance for any advice or comments.

As a potential munchkin, I'd be more interested in the ability this spell gives you to ignore the fatigued/exhausted conditions. Just slap this on a barbarian and turn him loose, or put it on a mount and have it take run actions to get you where you're going in record time.

Quote:

At the end of the duration, the character suffers 1d4 points per level of additional non-lethal damage (Fortitude save for half) and becomes fatigued.

So... is this every point of non-lethal damage suddenly turning into 1d4 with a Fort for half, or just the non-lethal damage received from sources other than wounds being magically healed? What's the save DC to halve the damage?

It would be additional damage caused by the spell. The DC would be the standard 10 + SL (in this case, tentatively 1) + Ability Mod. I should also probably make it clear that it's 1d4 points per caster level, and I don't know if there should be a cap or not.

Sure, you could ride your mount into the ground. That's what you would be doing, though. Although the penalties are suspended, they would still accrue. When the duration ends, they would hit you, or in your case the horse, all at once.

The spell itself seems like an interesting idea, but 2 hours per level seems pretty excessive for an effect like this. At higher levels, especially with liberal application of Extend Spell, this spell will last more than one day; I'm not sure that's quite what one has in mind when they think of an effect like this. Maybe 10 minutes per level would be more appropriate?

Considering the way that healing works in your game, how this spell affects game balance is going to pretty much be all-or-nothing, I'd imagine; either fine as a level 1 spell, or too wonky to use at any level.

It would be additional damage caused by the spell. The DC would be the standard 10 + SL (in this case, tentatively 1) + Ability Mod. I should also probably make it clear that it's 1d4 points per caster level, and I don't know if there should be a cap or not.

Sure, you could ride your mount into the ground. That's what you would be doing, though. Although the penalties are suspended, they would still accrue. When the duration ends, they would hit you, or in your case the horse, all at once.

So a caster with strong casting stats would be making it harder on his allies than Joe Schmoe, who has an 11 in his primary casting attribute and can barely cast this spell? Seems kinda backward.

And you're doing 1d4/CL to your allies with this? An 8th-level caster would average 20 points of damage with 8d4, which seems pretty excessive. After all, the "standard" fighter in the DMG only has 64 HP at that level...

I could see this spell doing 1/CL or 1d2/2 CLs, but averaging about 1/3 of your beefiest ally's HP is pretty rough.

The spell itself seems like an interesting idea, but 2 hours per level seems pretty excessive for an effect like this. At higher levels, especially with liberal application of Extend Spell, this spell will last more than one day; I'm not sure that's quite what one has in mind when they think of an effect like this. Maybe 10 minutes per level would be more appropriate?

Agreed, but I may keep it to 1 hour/level. I want it to last longer than a combat, but 2 hours/level is likely too much.

Quote:

Considering the way that healing works in your game, how this spell affects game balance is going to pretty much be all-or-nothing, I'd imagine; either fine as a level 1 spell, or too wonky to use at any level.

That's what I'm afraid of. I guess it just may need to be playtested before I'll know. The extra damage at the end of the spell is supposed to keep it from being a "must have", but I don't know if it even does that well. That brings me to:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dalar

So a caster with strong casting stats would be making it harder on his allies than Joe Schmoe, who has an 11 in his primary casting attribute and can barely cast this spell? Seems kinda backward.

Most of the time an ally isn't going to try to resist the spell (how often do you resist, say, cure light wounds?) but if they try, a better spellcaster is always harder to resist.

Quote:

And you're doing 1d4/CL to your allies with this? An 8th-level caster would average 20 points of damage with 8d4, which seems pretty excessive. After all, the "standard" fighter in the DMG only has 64 HP at that level...

I could see this spell doing 1/CL or 1d2/2 CLs, but averaging about 1/3 of your beefiest ally's HP is pretty rough.

But you have to weigh that against the benefits. It's supposed to be a tough choice, risking further damage down the road to stay in the fight now. That fighter is also the one more likely to save against the damage, and as the damage goes up, so does the duration/usefulness of the spell. I know it's not perfect, I'm just trying to see it from both sides so I can see where tweaks need to be made.

The way I see the spell being used:

Example 1
A character is down to 3/10 hp. A cure light wounds that rolls max for level 1 would bring him back to 10/10 hp with 7 non-lethal damage and

if I didn't mention it, healing spells make you fatigued. Not married to the idea if it turns out to be bad-broken

fatigued. That character, while farther from death, is still 3hp away from being out of the fight. Then the cleric casts Touch of Renewal (or perhaps cast it before combat). The character ignores the effects of non-lethal damage and the fatigued condition. He's, effectively, back at full fighting strength.

Let's say an hour later, the spell ends. Say the rogue fails the fort save and takes the full 4 non-lethal. He's at 10/10 but now has 11 non-lethal and is exhausted. He immediately falls unconscious. An hour later he is no longer exhausted (as normal) but is still fatigued. During that hour, he has healed enough non-lethal damage that he regains consciousness.

Example 2:
You're racing the plot to the ruins in the hills. After walking all day, you decide to travel through the night. A few castings of this spell, and your party can travel on long after you would normally drop from forced march damage. It still accrues, but maybe it gives you all the time you need before the spell wears off and you collapse, maybe even die outright from the accrued damage.

While beneficial (read: harmless) spells don't require saving throws (you can automatically resist them, if for some odd reason you wanted to do so), this spell doesn't fit that mold. There's also the matter of this:

Quote:

At the end of the duration, the character suffers 1d4 points per level of additional non-lethal damage (Fortitude save for half) and becomes fatigued.

This is what my question was aimed at. You're going to take damage, but you're allowed a save, but the save is harder because your ally is better than the guy who can barely cast anything. You could remove the save and make it a fixed 1/level, which would do a lot to keep it clear and simple. Or you could make it a fixed DC that doesn't scale with level or casting attribute.

Going back to the example of an 8th-level caster, and a "standard" Fighter, that would still be 1/8 of the Fighter's HP. Enough to be an inconvenience, but not enough to make you never cast the spell. When you consider that the "standard" Rogue at the same level has only 38 hp, you're looking at about 1/5 of his HP. A heavy warhorse has only 30 HP, so this spell would be about 1/4 of that.

It's certainly a bit of a deterrent, but if you wanted to make it 1d2/level, 2/level, or 1d3/level, that might work for you.